Arcadia
by Lindsey Grissom
Summary: A case puts Jen and Gibbs in close quarters. 'He walks around at night, she hears him while she pretends to be sleeping...' Jibbs.


**Disclaimer: **_I don't own them, if I did, well, there would still BE a them, to own. I don't make any money either, sadly._

**Arcadia**

Sometimes Jenny wonders whether she's ever had any real control over her life.

She walks into MTAC for a conference call with the Sec-Nav and leaves an hour later with two folders and a throbbing headache.

She swallows the painkillers down with three fingers of Bourbon and places the call to the Bullpen. She doesn't give the painkillers time to work before calling, she doesn't want to allow herself the time to delegate telling him to someone else.

When she knows he's on his way up the staircase she looks at the contents of one folder. She's still staring at her name and his on the marriage certificate when he bursts into the room.

0

Gibbs wasn't happy when she told him. He refused at first. Jumped up and paced around and glared at her when she told him it wasn't optional. He practically growled her name as he left, slamming the door so hard it swung open again.

Now he sits next to her on the plane, jean-clad legs stretched out, head back and eyes closed. He hasn't said a single word to her since they booked in their luggage. She thinks he forgets, sometimes, that while she's his boss, she has superiors to answer to herself.

She doesn't have first-hand experience, but she can't help but wonder if this is what it's always like being married to Gibbs. If it is, she's even less surprised now, that his wives divorced him.

0

Paris looks the way it always has. She's been back here several times over the years but never with Jethro.

They pick up the rental at the airport. He finally talks to her at the baggage carousel, a rant of blame and curses. When he leaves her to confront the staff at the Help desk Jenny takes a moment to wish it were her bags that had gone missing. The mood he's in, she doubts he would have cared so much about that.

The drive is slow and quiet. It's a more comfortable silence between them now, apparently the lost luggage served to bleed off a lot of his anger.

The house is a three floor terrace. The area isn't the best but seeing her face, Jethro turns and reminds her; "We've stayed in worse places." He carries two of her bags up the steps and into to the entryway.

He comes back out before she can walk through the door and lifts her up into his arms. As he carries her over the threshold she realises he's become '_Jethro_' again.

Standing back on her feet, alone, just inside the doorway she blames it all on Paris.

0

The house has two bedrooms. She didn't even have to ask him, by the time she had phoned to have the electricity and gas turned on, he had already picked out a room and moved in as much as a man with only a holdall can.

Hers is the one at the front and Jenny spends the moments they're not working, looking out across the Seine.

The first week goes past too fast and not fast enough. Jethro wants to keep working all through the nights and she tells him more than once that they have a basement and he should just start another damn boat and let her have some peace.

He walks around at night, she hears him while she pretends to be sleeping. They're not getting anywhere with the case and she isn't that confident that their covers are holding. He still barely speaks to her and they have hardly left the house since arriving.

She rolls over again and tries to ignore his presence on the floor below her. She's just so tired. The tension between them and the stress of the job. The dreams don't help either.

0

_Jenny rolls over, back to side and runs her hand across the naked body she finds beside her. His skin goose-bumps against her fingertips and she smiles at the shivers running through him._

"_Jen." The roughness of his voice sends a pulse of heat between her thighs and she almost gasps aloud at how easily he affects her._

_Her nails scratch lightly down his back until he arches up against them, a growl drawn from somewhere low in his chest._

"_Jen." A warning as he grabs hold of her wrist and stills her hand before moving and tugging her down under him. He pushes her legs apart with one thigh and as he leans over her, his skin rubs against her. Moisture pools where they touch._

_He runs a hand up from her thigh to her neck before twisting into her hair and holding her still. He presses his length into her stomach and she bends her back to grind up against him. To get him closer to where she needs him._

_His blue eyes looking down at her are dark, the pupils shot wide. "Jen." She reaches up with her free hand to pull his head down to her. "Jen." His mouth doesn't move._

"Jen!" Jethro's calls from downstairs wake her. She muffles the scream with her pillow.

0

They start talking about things that don't include the case on Day Thirteen. They start fighting about things that don't include the case on Day Fourteen.

They're in familiar surroundings, familiar roles and far too close together for him to remember that he isn't the Senior Agent anymore.

She makes sure to remind him.

"We will be doing it my way. Do I make myself clear, _Agent Gibbs_?"

"Crystal, _Madame Director_."

Her cheeks are flushed bright red with the anger and his blood pulses with the passion of it.

He takes a step, or she takes a step and their mouths crash together. She rips five buttons loose from his shirt. He has to find a ladder, the next day, one long enough to reach her bra in the chandelier.

0

Their cover's really a cover of a cover. The one they're after, he'll know who they are. That's what they're counting on.

He'll know that they're NCIS and that they are only pretending to be married. He'll come after them, eventually, because he remembers them and thinks they're here to do to someone else what they almost did to him.

So it isn't for him that Jenny puts on a long elegant gown, the shade matching Jethro's eyes, and forces Jethro into a Tuxedo with a waistcoat the colour of hers.

The New Years party is nothing like the NCIS ones they've both attended. It's decadent with silk and velvet drapes in rich colours. Beautiful people dancing in beautiful outfits.

Jethro glares at everyone who asks her to dance and she turns them down as politely as she can. She giggles into her champagne at the expression on his face when a greying woman asks him.

Just before the year ticks over he moves in front of her and holds out his hand.

They dance with her cheek against his chest, his chin tucked against the top of her head.

They count down in French and he pulls away to tip her face up to his. His lips are soft and warm and without much effort his tongue breaks through to tangle with hers.

Somewhere at the back of her mind she's confident that this will only serve to further support their cover for all their neighbours to see. Further back she's still aware that _he_ is here somewhere watching and waiting. Even further back is a little voice repeating over and over again that this is not real.

Jethro lets out a moan against her that drowns out everything but surface thoughts.

0

They spend half their nights the third week in her bed and half in his. Neither will give up their rooms for the other. It means that some mornings Jenny has to run through the cool house to find her make-up, and others Jethro strolls naked down the hallway to his room because she wore his boxers when she left the bed to make breakfast.

0

They take a stroll along the Seine. Jethro holds her hand and pulls her along when he sees an empty bench. They sit and hold hands and feed each other from the little picnic she packed this morning.

When they get back to the house the lock's been tampered with and Jethro forces her behind him even as they both draw their weapons.

The entryway is darker than it should be, all the curtains drawn in the house. The only light comes from the study and they walk there slowly. Jenny reaches forward with her free hand and finds his reaching back.

Their target sits in an armchair, the armchair Jethro sat in last night, pulling her down onto his lap and pressing butterfly kisses against her neck. His first mistake is believing in their flimsy cover. His second is in coming alone.

Standing shoulder to shoulder with Jethro, Jenny keeps her gun aimed at his chest while the men talk. Back-up was alerted the moment he was caught by the exterior cameras.

They come in ten minutes later, guns blazing and she finds herself thrown to the floor. In the chaos a hand makes its way beneath her body to wrap around her waist. She hopes it's Jethro above her, otherwise he'll be irrate when she takes her protector to bed.

0

Jethro sits on the plane, jean-clad legs stretched out, head back and eyes closed. Jenny presses herself closer to his side, her legs drawn up onto her seat as she sprawls across him.

He keeps an arm wrapped tight around her even as he sleeps and every time she moves too far away he snaps awake and pulls her back.

He does it again and she smiles into his shirt, dropping a kiss there. Tomorrow they'll be back in DC. He'll join his team on another case as though he hasn't been away for a month, she'll walk into MTAC and be debriefed. She wonders how far behind them Paris will be when she starts to think of him as '_Gibbs_' again.

His breathing changes beneath her ear and the whisper in her hair follows him into sleep.

"Stay with me, Jen."

She nods, closing her eyes. Her hand rests against his chest, her fingers lightly gripping the fabric above his heart.

_**End.**_


End file.
